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Time to swim over to the other side of the planet to watch inept diplomacy at work in Asia. For this, Xinhuanet is a dry source of breaking news, the Chinese don't even bother with propaganda points, it is all so obvious. North Korea is spitting in our eyes again with impunity and South Korea is saying no to our demand they pay for our military which many Koreans hate at this point. I supply video proof of this.

Wellington- The world's top spy chiefs - including the heads of the CIA and British, Australian and Canadian agencies - have been meeting in secret this week in New Zealand. The elite Anglo-Saxon group is known as Echelon. It intercepts and records telephone calls, e-mails and other forms of electronic communication.

The gathering was held in New Zealand because the country's spy agency, the Security Intelligence Service (SIS), is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

Dear Echelon. Snooping without warrants on our private affairs! How delightful. Perhaps there are many Americans and other 'Anglo Saxons' who think spying is a good thing, England, our foundation stone, is seeped in cameras and spies, they are everywhere even as simple civility collapses. The model we are aping is the Soviet Police State. What a fine thing that is.

PYONGYANG, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- The United States committed more than 170 cases of aerial espionage against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) in November, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Thursday, citing a military resource.

The DPRK accused the United States of using tactical reconnaissance planes, including EP-3, to conduct night flights over Taebu Islet and the areas of Hoengsong and Yangphyong in a bid to spy on the DPRK.

The IDF flies with impunity over Lebanon and Palestine and sneers at everyone. We do the same thing in the Middle East and Asia. If the North Koreans are pissed about this, you can bet, the Chinese communist leaders are not happy, either. They are still lying low, letting us abuse our welcome, but imagining they will allow this to be the status quo forever is foolish.

Americans rarely get any real news from anywhere. I have watched for years as the Korean people fought our military bases with great energy and heroism. They are literally in a life and death battle, trying to stop our bases which we have decided to move to the southern half of South Korea. The resentment our soldiers are creating is very intense and I am puzzled as to what we, the American people, are getting for all this!

Japan wants to control Korea and they have latched onto our miliary to do this and the Koreans see us as proxies for the hated Japanese and this, combined with the Japanese refusal to pay reparations for WWII or pay the girls who were put into sexual slavery, this means a lot of bad blood which wasn't our fault and yet here we are, standing with the Japanese and not the Chinese or Koreans!

Here is a video of South Koreans attacking an American military base, and I do mean ATTACKING. Furiously. This last June.

SEOUL, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- The South Korean government said Thursday that it failed to reach an agreement during a two-day negotiation with the United States on how to share the defense cost for the U.S. forces stationed on the country.

The government plans to continue consultations with the U.S. side through diplomatic channels to complete the defense cost-sharing negotiations, said a press release by the Foreign Ministry.

It was the sixth time that South Korea and the United States failed to strike a deal on the issue.

Here is an anti-american military demonstration that turned violent last year.

Pyeongtaek, South Korea - The Autonomous Peace Village of Daechuri has been resisting the expansion of U.S. Army base Camp Humphreys for over three years. Within the past month, they have been attacked three times. This attack was the most devastating thus far.

The attack lasted from 9 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon. They invaded the village from four different directions, targetting distant areas within the vast farmland, spreading the 100 villagers, human rights activists, and supporters dangerously thin. The riot police escorted backhoes, bulldozers, and cement trucks.

Why are we doing this? It makes zero sense. Hearts and minds! If our military is turning people away from us, this becomes increasingly expensive and increasingly useless. What are our goals? To hold the entire planet down under our boots? Are we the Soviet Union?

The Soviets, like us today, didn't produce much of anything exportable except military equipment and rockets. This model has been shown to be a huge failure. So why are we imitating them? Once upon a time, when they had nothing good to export, America was the world's number one exporter of manufactured goods.

Today, the question is, do we make anything aside from rockets and military equipment? No? Haha.

Narita (Japan) Nov 30: US envoy Christopher Hill said today the ball was now in North Korea's court, admitting there remained "a lot of work to do" to restart talks on ending its nuclear programme.

Hill, paying a brief visit to Japan on his way back from crunch talks with North Korea in Beijing, said, however, that he remained optimistic talks would resume sometime in December.

"I want to stress the ball is in their court. They know what they have to do," hill told reporters at Narita international airport near Tokyo, before heading back to the United States.

North Korea knows perfectly well what to do: wait until we are really freaking out in Iraq and then slug this ball back into our mid drift.

Kim is very good at this. Baby dragon will still go 'boom' and smuggling I-pods from China is laughably easy. No sane nation will ever disarm again. None. Our foolish invasion of Iraq right on the heels of the UN's certification of disarmament, taught everyone a sharp lesson: do not trust the USA. Do not cooperate with the USA. Do not make deals with the USA.

Whack. Now the ball is back in our court. I put it there for the North Koreans. What is Condi Rice going to say about that?

Bush has meeting with Maliki. America wakes up to the leak of the Baker Commission report and sees it is just a repeat of the disasterous 'Vietization' program we tried before we were defeated there. Fierce fighting in Baquoba and the leaders of the Taliban and al Qaeda walk about openly in Pakistan. I predict Maliki will keep us in Iraq because our troops are hostages now for Iran. Israel attacks Iran, they die.

AMMAN, Jordan, Nov. 30 — President Bush today proclaimed Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki "the right guy for Iraq," and said the two had agreed to speed the turnover of security responsibility from American to Iraqi forces. But Mr. Bush dismissed a reported decision by an independent bipartisan panel to call for a gradual withdrawal of troops.

"I know there's a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there's going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq," the president said during a joint news conference with Mr. Maliki, referring to the panel's reports that are expected next week. "We're going to stay in Iraq to get the job done as long as the government wants us there."

Um, there is no graceful exit from this tar pit. Way back, before the war, I demonstrated in DC against it. My take: Iraq is shaped literally like a bag with a very narrow opening, it is a classic cul-de-sac. Going in is easy, coming out is very hard. Our only exit if the Shi'ites decide to decimate us is via the desert between Iraq and Syria and this is Anbar province, the place where the hottest fighting is raging and where everyone is turned against us!

I marvel at the ineptitude of the Pentagon's planners. If little old me can see this, why are they blind to it? At West Point, they teach military history and my apprehensions about the coming war were based entirely on historical facts, this was, I thought, very easy to see. Just like everyone has known since around 2,000 BC, one shouldn't march an invading army between two defiles without first securing the hill tops, the notion of pouring all of one's troops into a cul-de-sac has been a military verity for just as long. Like, don't march into a canyon with no exit, dudes!

So why is the collective IQ of the Pentagon so dismal? Well, we saw them in action on 9/11. They goofed off. Not until the attackers hit the Pentagon itself, did this sluggish, lazy beast wake up. But all the plans since that moment have been madness, stupid and astonishingly inept. I say, fire all the planners and hire someone who knows tactics and strategy. Hire Col. X in Iraq. He obviously knows how to fight.

Back to the summit that was only a hill top:

Mr. Maliki, for his part, dismissed any suggestion that he had cancelled the meeting out of pique, saying the meeting – which had been scheduled to include King Abdullah II of Jordan – was not necessary because the prime minister and the king had already had discussion earlier in the day. "So there's no problem," Mr. Maliki said.

Translation: the Shi'ite chief told the Sunni king, butt out. The Shi'ite President just had a meeting with an elected Shi'ite President, Ahmadinejad, the Shi'ites just won many seats in an election in a Gulf kingdom and all the kings ruling Shi'ites are scared sh*tless. The Shi'ites hold some very impressive cards and they don't want the Sunni kings, all corrupt and venal traitors to their Islamic subjects, to interfere. So the king stayed very scarce during this meeting where Maliki very gingerly shook Bush's hands while giving him the look of death.

This is obvious in the photos. Every picture from Teheran shows a beaming, happy, relieved Maliki hugging and kissing Ahmadinejad. A classic way to read diplomatic tea leaves is to look at photos of the participants. Anyone with even slight aquaintance of reading faces can easily decipher relationships. Looking at Putin's eyes throwing darts at Bush's back in nearly all photos with Putin standing behind Bush is amusing, for example.

The senior official said the Hadley memo did not come up during the breakfast, except for a few jokes about leaks to the media – a reference to The New York Times, which published the memo in Wednesday's editions. The official said Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki seemed comfortable with one another.

"There's no cloud over the meeting in any fashion whatsoever," she said.

Still, tensions seemed to bubble just under the surface. The two leaders barely looked at one another during the news conference. And when Mr. Bush, at one point, asked the prime minister if he wanted to continue taking questions from reporters, the prime minister swiveled his head toward the president and shot Mr. Bush an incredulous look.

"We said six questions, now this is the seventh – this is the eighth – eight questions," Mr. Maliki said.

Nearly universally, Bush's toadies like to say Bush or whoever is 'comfortable'. This, concerning a man who makes everyone visibly uncomfortable if not downright angry. Just before trotting off to the Middle East to blunder about, Bush tried to joke with the only Senator with a son in Iraq, fighting. Senator Webb was so offended by Bush's flippant remarks, he evidently said to friends at the party where this happened, he wanted to punch Bush in the snout.

This careless, jokey, goofy, drunken frat rat raises hackles wherever he goes. Sending him out on diplomatic missions has caused more trouble for America than sending bin Laden out as an envoy to Israel.

In reference to Sadr pulling out of the goverment coalition:

"My coalition is not only with one entity," the prime minister said, speaking through an interpreter. He added, "Mr. Sadr and the Sadrists are just one component that participate in the parliament."

There are some interesting forces at work here nearly all of which are totally hidden from view of Americans but in the Middle East, due to the complications of the complex Ottoman empire's construction, reading Byzantine tea leaves comes naturally to everyone. Heck, Byzantia is in Turkey, after all! Understanding palace intriques and subtle statements is second nature with everyone in the Middle East. The USA officials are so accustomed to getting our own way, we have no ability to understand anything anymore.

Kind of reminds me of the Chinese when I was asked to teach the embassy staff how to interact with outsiders. I was not surprized to learn they didn't know how to ring doorbells and ask permission to enter, for example. My parents told stories about how government officials would blythely walk into their bedroom unexpectedly. Once, into the BATHROOM!

So it is with American diplomats: evidently we have to start from scratch. They have to learn what is an inappropritate joke and don't touch women who are Presidents like Bush did recently. And spitting food while talking is totally gross. Ewww.

So many lessons. I suggest the State Department hire a nun with a ruler to instruct everyone on proper decorum.

AMMAN, Jordan - President Bush's high-profile meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Wednesday was canceled in a stunning turn of events after disclosure of U.S. doubts about the Iraqi leader's capabilities and a political boycott in Baghdad protesting his attendance.

Instead of two days of talks, Bush and al-Maliki will have breakfast and a single meeting followed by a news conference on Thursday morning, the White House said.

The abrupt cancellation was an almost unheard-of development in the high-level diplomatic circles of a U.S. president, a king and a prime minister. There was confusion — and conflicting explanations — about what happened.

So, from the very beginning, this was a terrible development. Anything that came out of this was to our disadvantage. The only thing that came out was the wool being pulled over Bush's eyes. The previous meeting in Iran between Talibani, the President of Iraq, concluded with a vow of friendship and love and a joint statement that the GOAL was to remove American INFLUENCE in the entire Middle East! So it is obvious we are seeing the various sides in this civil war picking their allies.

A sane, smart foreign policy initiative takes into consideration all these factors: what happens before, who said what to whom and what are the ultimate goals? Answering these questions is the work of diplomats and it seems to me, we don't have any real diplomats anymore. We have people like Condi running around, barking orders or talking in tremoulous voices, begging everyone to stop whatever, sort of like how we whine to the Chinese all the time, this means Americans have to grow up and join the ranks of the civilized world.

Maybe learn finesse from the French, for crying out loud. Go to the opera. Many operas have stuff about diplomacy in them like the Ring der Nibelungen by Wagner, nearly all of Verdi, any Baroque opera, Mozart, even!

Gads. Being civilized means attaining the mentality and intelligence of the fine arts which then causes the mind to see things differently rather than...oh well, the Nazis loved opera and look at them. One can always learn the wrong lessons!

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Fierce fighting Wednesday between coalition forces and insurgents shut down the Iraqi city of Baqouba, killing scores of militants and civilians. Dozens of bullet-riddled bodies were found around Baghdad.

The fighting will get worse and worse now because the lines are now drawn in the bloody sand and no one is going to sit idle while the Shi'ites consolidate power! The coming struggle for dominance isn't an easy one to riddle out, there are many forces at work here, this is 'the Perfect Storm', aka, a great way to trigger WWIII.

The super-danger here is as always, the crazed American rulers going nuts and nuking everyone. The chances of this happening is very high. The Iranians don't want to be nuked and the Israelis can't afford t be nuked but mutual destruction is always on the agenda and can't be ignored.

Unlike Vietnam, this struggle for power is fueled by religious frevor and this means it will be very ugly indeed. No one is going to back down if they imagine they are 'Gott mit uns.' The entire struggle of bin Laden vis a vis the Saudi Royals is over their choice of buying American military mercenaries to do the bidding of the Muslims, he was quite clear that this made them traitors not to Saudi Arabia but to ISLAM!

Refusing to understand this, we pulled troops out of Saudi Arabia but continued this fatal relationship and this battle will continue, Americans think, 9/11 was a singular event. But any readers of history know, it is only one tragic page in a book filled with bloody pages and we are not at the beginning of the end but the end of the beginning, to paraphrase Churchill.

This disasterous meeting of Maliki with Bush has telegraphed our weakness to all parties involved in this coming conflagration. Americans ignored the Iran/Iraq war. The Shi'ites were willing to take half a million casualties! This is most astonishing! And there has grown up a new generation since that war, these youth are now coming of age and here we go again.

The Taliban and al Qaeda have become so emboldened by recent events in Pakistan that senior al Qaeda operatives have been spotted "walking and talking openly" in the market of Mir Ali in North Waziristan, according to analysts at the British Joint Intelligence Committee.

North Waziristan is where the Pakistani military withdrew its troops following a peace agreement with the government of Pakistan in September.

This peace treaty was, as I pointed out back then, a surrender. NATO wants to surrender, too, but the USA won't let them, they did finally rebuff our demands for increased troops. But that stupid war is done. We lost. If we were smart, we would withdraw and lick our wounds and maybe learn some lessons...naw.

Learning is hard work. The Pentagon generals want to make money when they 'retire' working for the military/industrial complex. Building and buying very expensive toys is what it is all about. Star wars! Whoo hoo.

As I fully expected, a very busy day as the entire Middle East shifts gears and everyone realigns themselves and the USA is left out in the deluded cold. Iran and Maliki do the Anschluss two step while the USA continues to flounder about. The European Union rebuffed Turkey who willl turn to its former empire and the Sunni will cling to them in the bitter end, repudiating the breakup of WWI and WWII. The world is rapidly morphing and we are left behind, clueless and rudderless.

By NASSER KARIMI, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 21 minutes ago
TEHRAN, Iran - Iraq's president said Wednesday he had reached a security agreement with Iran, which the United States accuses of fueling the chaos in the war-torn country. Iran's president called on countries to stop backing "terrorists" in Iraq and for the Americans to withdraw.

Tehran is believed to back some of the Shiite militias blamed in the vicious sectarian killings that have thrown the country into chaos. The United States has said the Iraqi government should press Iran to stop interfering in its affairs in a bid to calm the violence.

Presidents Jalal Talabani of Iraq and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran held talks Wednesday hours before U.S. President George W. Bush was due to meet with the Iraqi prime minister in Jordan in talks aimed at finding a solution to Iraq's spiraling bloodshed.

Talabani gave no details on the security agreement with Iran, and Ahmadinejad made no mention of any deal at a joint press conference in Tehran.

My god. Give the Persian kitty a big catnip mouse. This is a stunning event. The USA, trying to orchestrate a 'let's boycott and imprison the Persians' turned into 'Yo, you American dudes are in a cul-de-sac from hell!' There is no ending of this but one: the USA negotiates a retreat with the Iranians who will kindly let us flee Iraq...if we sign some significant treaties that hands over dominance of the Middle East to them.

Or we can threaten nuclear war and then violently retreat. The Iranians will let us flee because they don't want nuclear war. They are patient. They know, our defeat will prevent us from patrolling the Middle East and the Palestinians, far from feeling weak, will feel very strong and the fighting there will increase and of course, Hezbollah will be riding high and higher!

A THREE-WAY meeting today in the Jordanian capital between US President George W. Bush, embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and King Abdullah II has been cancelled because of lack of time, a palace official said.

"The American president and King Abdullah II met but there was no time left for the Iraqi prime minister to join them as planned," the official said.

Slap! Slap! Slap! The Chinese and Russians grin as Bush is delivered the biggest slaps an emperor has ever recieved. Bush is a fool, we are idiots for not arresting him. His actions this week are grounds for impeachement for rank incompetence only we can't impeach all the neo cons that infest America, there are too many and the rich who pay them have no intention of taking any blame for any of this.

The loss of 'face' here is TOTAL. No ifs, ands or buts. This is the biggest loss of power in the last 100 years. Hitler, in his bunker, is the only person to surpass this achievement.

A key meeting between US President George W Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki aimed at tackling Iraq's growing violence has been delayed.

The two men are in Jordan and were to have evening talks with King Abdullah, but Mr Bush and Mr Maliki will now meet on Thursday, officials said.

The move came after an Iraqi political grouping suspended its participation in government in protest at the meeting.

It also follows the leak of a US memo raising doubts over Mr Maliki.

The doubts we have with Maliki are nothing compared to his doubts of us. And he has pretty much performed a coup, he has turned the tables on America. Now, things will be very violent as Mr. X, the Sunni shadow leader, begins to seriously move to eliminate Maliki. And us.

Again, RUN AWAY!!! Or die. And I am assuming the Pentagon has no clue, they don't read me often enough nor believe me. So many soldiers will die. And we will talk about nuking the Iraqis and Iranians and the Chinese and Russians will deliver an ultimatum and we will have WWIII or the USA will figure out we lost this poker game, the Go Game is over, and resign and we will have peace and some serious poverty.

Pope Benedict XVI has met Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I in Turkey, on the second day of a landmark visit to the largely Muslim country.

The Istanbul talks with the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians aimed to heal an old rift.

The Turks want secularism. They are very disturbed by the religious revival on their own borders but they also sense, maybe the Sunni and Shias will turn to them as in the past for security and peace and they will get this by halting the mad religious wars. Bin Laden's al Qaeda fears this more than anything.

But all this was in vain because the EU still refuses to let Turkey join so I am predicting, Turkey will turn back to its former empire and start making deals with Sunnis interested in reasserting Turkish rule over the former Ottoman Empire.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission recommended a partial suspension of EU accession talks with Turkey on Wednesday, dealing a blow to Ankara's hope of joining the European Union after it refused to open its ports to Cyprus.

The Pope just announced he wants Turkey in the European Union. But fears of Muslims runs so high, this just won't happen. The Turks will turn their energy towards forging a new EU: the Ottoman solution. Namely, they will begin to try to make the Middle East and other Ottoman lands their sphere of influence. Repudiating Europe, they will turn attention towards their backwards backyard. A good idea, too.

VATICAN CITY — Over the course of his long and controversial career, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has had many titles. Now he reportedly has one more — adviser to the Pope.

According to the Italian newspaper La Stampa, Pope Benedict XVI has invited the 83-year-old former adviser to Richard Nixon to be a political consultant, and Kissinger has accepted.

Just as Kissinger had his moment of glory, surrendering to Mao, so he wants the Pope to pop the Turks and voila! A political coup! Except it failed.

Events are running against all this. The flow of energy is towards a revival of the Ottoman Empire in one form or another, most likely, a confederation and trade union that locks out Europe but works under the aegis of Russia and China, the New New World Order brought about by a bunch of commies, isn't that FUNNY?

HAHAHAHA.

Video of Kissinger growling in Germanic tones about the Neue Welt Ordnung.

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) -- Jordan's king said he will press President Bush to focus more attention on resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict when the two meet this week.

In a speech to Parliament Tuesday, King Abdullah II described the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as the "core" issue in the Middle East.

Quick review of the King and Jordan and the Palestinian people: nothing, nothing, not even winning a war against the Jews, will please them than to play foosball with the King of Jordan's head in the gutters.

Readers of this blog know that I track the inner workings of the Great Game of Diplomacy with a lot of humor and disgust. The greatest paper in the USA is the New York Times. I will dissect their childish, silly, shallow analysis of the tremendous political realignment that is now seriously underway. Their inability to understand or analyse this great event shows clearly how terrifyingly detached from reality our media and our rich rulers really are.

News AnalysisDeeper Crisis, Less U.S. Sway in Iraq
By JOHN F. BURNS and KIRK SEMPLE
Published: November 29, 2006

BAGHDAD, Nov. 28 — When President Bush meets in Jordan on Wednesday with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq, it will be a moment of bitter paradox: at a time of heightened urgency in the Bush administration’s quest for solutions, American military and political leverage in Iraq has fallen sharply.

So, even the NYT has noticed our ability to influence people and make friends in the Middle East has collapsed. I will forewarn everyone that no where in this long article is the word 'Israel' mentioned. Not a peep about the disasterous war, 'Summer Rain' or the pesky Palestinians, either. Indeed, this entire analysis is boneheadedly stupid.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here Monday night, "Iranian nation and government would definitely remain by side of its brother, Iraq, and we will do anything that our government and people can do to boost security in Iraq."

To me, this looks like Iran is saying they will safeguard the elected government of Iraq. I also will note that Iran's web page is imitating the Chinese diplomatic news style I love so much at Xinhuanet:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad here Monday emphasized, "Islamic Republic of Iran and Algeria, two important Islamic countries, shoulder important international responsibilities Speaking with Algerian President's special envoy and that country's Energy and Mines Minister Shakib Khalil, Ahmadinejad added.

Hu and Wen have had conversations with Iran about how to comport themselves. China used to use careless, hamfisted diplomatic language and gestures like firing rockets over Taiwan when they got mad at the possibility of Taiwan voting to become a different country. I notice the number of times Ahmadinejad puts his foot in his mouth are decreasing (slowly, heh, still does it an awful lot!).

Here is another diplomatic story at his webpage:

Government spokesman and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's envoy, Gholam-Hossein Elham, in a meeting with Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, here Tuesday delivered the written message of Ahmadinejad to him.

The Sunni kings and overlords are anxiously circling around Iran, they can see American power and influence draining away rapidly and are trying to get a handle on this new dynamic situation.

And here is the nub of several matters: Hussein gave Iraqi women tremendous freedom and civil rights which the invading American and British imperial forces ripped from their hands and handed them over to the right wing, conservative Shi'ites and Sunni religious leaders.

President calls for safeguarding Muslim women's rights

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a meeting with Malaysian Minister of Women, Family and Social Development Shahrizad Abdeljalil here Tuesday urged Muslim women to propose strategies such as formation of convention to safeguard Muslim woman's rights.

We pretended we brought women's rights to Iraq and Afghanistan. We did not. Our very invasion destroyed the legitimacy of women's rights and no where do women retain rights by force, this has to be won internally as we see here in America with the GOP constantly trying to reduce our rights and access to birth control and vital information for our own health.

Back to the NYT article above: I am astonished at the sneering analysis provided by American advisors.

They say they see few policy options that can turn the situation around, other than for Iraqi leaders to come to a realization that time is running out. It is not clear that the United States can gain new traction in Iraq with some of the proposals outlined in a classified White House memorandum, which was compiled after the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, visited Baghdad last month.

Many of the proposals appear to be based on an assumption that the White House memo itself calls into question: that Prime Minister Maliki can be persuaded to break with 30 years of commitment to Shiite religious identity and set a new course, or abandon the ruling Shiite religious alliance to lead a radically different kind of government, a moderate coalition of Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish politicians.

The memo’s assessment of Mr. Maliki tracks closely with what his American and Iraqi critics in Baghdad say: that six months after taking office, he has still not shown that he is willing or capable of rising above Shiite sectarianism.

Time is running out and the Iraqis don't know this? HAHAHA. Seriously, the reporters should have whacked the head of the lunatics saying this. In the center of the maelstrom, Maliki is unaware that time is running out? Huh?

Every time we kill someone important there, our situation grows worse for we have been busy eliminating all oppostion to the new future ruler of Iraq. He is waiting impatiently for us to kill Saddam. The public execution, far from making things quieter, will unleash the dogs of hell as all the contenders step out of the shadows and begin the process of rallying the Iraqi factions into fighting openly.

Already, Sadr is doing this, he knows he has precious little time before the unknown Sunni takes him on in a full scale battle. The only people on earth who think we have plenty of time is our own government. This is why everyone is dwaddling along, waiting for the stupid, futile Baker Commission to say totally irrelevent things that no longer matter and are no longer relevent since events have long raced ahead.

In wars, one must move fast! One must be up to date with changing conditions and resond instantly! This is why empires die: they get caught in wars that develop rapidly while they slowly slog along on their own willfully chosen paths, ignoring reality.

These critics say, in effect, that the 56-year-old Iraqi leader has failed, so far, to meet the test set by Mr. Bush when the two men met for the first time in Baghdad in June. At that meeting, the American leader told Mr. Maliki he had come to “look you in the eye” and determine if America had a reliable partner here.

America is the unreliable partner. Understanding this is key to the whole mess. When Maliki was 'elected', our President didn't rush over to congratulate him. It was already way too dangerous. Bush and his minions yapped about 'turning a corner' and support for the war shot up as media propaganda roared that Iraq was now going to be at peace since everyone loves elections.

This silly notion flies in the face of the hate and fear our last three elections has caused and look at Mexico today: fighting is growing by the hour after the fishy election there! Anyone who thinks elections stop conflicts is crazy.

At this point in time, everyone who roared the propaganda garbage of how we came to free the Iraqis and bring them democracy are now rapidly dying just as we killed it in Palestine.

Shiites in Iraq are riven by factional rivalries, and there may be opportunities for the Americans to exploit those divisions to create parliamentary realignments. Indeed, some Iraqi leaders have started exploring new alliances to break the political logjam, possibly involving a parliamentary coup against Mr. Maliki. But if Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most powerful Shiite cleric, has been clear about anything, it has been that the Shiites must subordinate their differences to the cause of consolidating Shiite power.

Great. A coup. And what will this Shi'ite 'coup' do when Sadr storms through the streets demanding the people storm the Green Zone? Think the palace gates won't come down? It has happened more than once in history. Bastille Day and the October celebrations in Russia prove this reverberates for centuries!

For the Iraqi leader, the challenge presented by Mr. Sadr and the Mahdi Army amounts to a zero-sum game. If Mr. Maliki moves too fast against the militia, he risks losing Mr. Sadr’s support and splintering the Shiite bloc. If he moves too slowly, he will alienate the Sunni Arabs whose cooperation is crucial to any hope of reining in the insurgency.

Meanwhile, Mr. Maliki is in a vexed relationship with the United States. The Iraqi government needs the United States for the protection its 150,000 troops afford. At the same time, he has felt compelled to push back publicly against American pressures, partly to gain credibility among those in his power base who oppose the American presence, particularly the staunchly anti-American Mr. Sadr. Among other things, he has demanded effective control of Iraq’s new 140,000-man army, which remains under overall American command.

And here it is in a nutshell: the USA, NOT Maliki, runs this Grand Guignol theatric performance. The entire article is about how Maliki should take control and how the Iraqis must be more responsible, yet the IRAQI military forces are still controlled by the alien invaders! I'm happy the NYT analysts admit this but they don't tear into it. Instead, they have a bland story that mentions this at the very end and not with any astonishment. None of the 'experts' they questioned were asked about this.

Indeed, the wave of propaganda sweeping the nation this day is all about how stupid the Iraqis are and complaints about how they aren't fighting to keep order! Yet the key issue is carefully embalmed in cotton and buried at the bottom of the NYT.

'History,' he said, 'will record our response and judge or justify every nation in this hall.'
Although the President did not mention Iraq by name, Saddam Hussein's dictatorship was clearly to the front of the speech's firing line, and threatened by a pledge - coming at the end of a week in which further light is shed on Iraqi connections to al-Qaeda - that 'we are learning their names and we are coming to know their faces. However long it takes, their hour of justice will come'.

'Terrorism,' he said, 'depends on the aid or indifference of governments', and those countries deemed to give it refuge 'are equally guilty of murder and equally accountable to justice' as the bombers themselves.

Nations who did open their doors to terrorists, he said, 'will find out that their welcome guests are parasites who will weaken and consume them'.

The President affirmed US commitment to a Palestinian state as part of 'a just peace in the Middle East', and his administration's aim 'to bring both parties back into negotiations'.

The President saw a day 'when two states - Israel and Palestine -- live together in peace'.

This week, every Arab and every Muslim leader has been literally screaming this to Bush! This is barely making a peep in American media, I track this from all over.

The Chinese are carefully noting all this and it appears in Xinhuanet's news pages! Al Jazeera, even the BBC-run part, is posting this constantly. A parade of leaders in the Middle East are milling around, many of them in total terror, as they watch everything unfold.

Did the Saudis threaten Bush with turning off the oil spigots???? My bet is a big 'Yes!' because suddenly, with no warning, Israel is talking peace. The UN speech was a crude attempt at gaining permission to invade former Soviet states and former Soviet allies. We did absolutely nothing for the Palestinians. Nothing.

When they, under fire from the Israelis, had an election, we joined in destroying their democracy. This ended with the messed up invasion of Lebanon. The UN Security Council granted the USA continuing rights to occupy Iraq but the overwhelming world response to this is to yell about us refusing to protect the Palestinians from the Jewish colonialists and we moved on their behalf only when a sword was poked in our stomachs.

The dollar suddenly fell several days ago, vis a vis the euro. Well, I would suggest today's drop is part of this: the Arabs are now shifting their money out of the dollar. We are being punished for our sins.

The Iraq Study Group (ISG) is a "bipartisan task force" created by the US Congress in response to the failure of the Bush administration to better manage the occupation of Iraq. Mainstream media reporting and official statements from Washington have characterized the ISG as proof of a "shift towards diplomacy" in the Middle East. These same reports cite the sponsorship of the so-called US Institute for Peace as evidence that the ISG represents a "change of course". In fact, the ISG is another official damage control apparatus, spearheaded by notorious Western political and corporate elites, former military-intelligence officers, and "experts" from right wing and intelligence-connected Western think tanks---one of which is the US Institute for Peace itself.

This bandaid approach to fast moving events is already too late to staunch the bleeding. It will fix nothing and is only an excuse to do nothing and nothing will change until our own troops revolt and leave despite orders. This is how ALL wars end: the side that is defeated stops fighting and despite the demands of the generals and kings, the soldiers flow off the field of battle, throwing down their arms. Seldom do they fight to the death like the Spartans and Athenians did when facing the invasion by the Persians.

Expecting the Iraqis and Palestinians to throw down their weapons and flee is stupid because there is nowhere for them to go so they are standing and fighting just like the Russians did at Stalingrad. The Israeli offer of enslavement and theft has nothing for the Palestinian people. The American offer to the Iraqis to hand over all their oil via the illegal and malicious oil contracts we forced them to sign means they must get rid of us to regain control of their own oil assets.

And the internal struggle over this oil will rage whether we want it to or not.

Events are moving very fast now! The rats are running over the decks and pitching themselves overboard, heedless of the icebergs bobbing nearby. The lastest is Zelikow. Good riddance. The hysteria and insanity of what is happening today is reflected in the funniest headline yet that says Bush will talk only to friends while Iraq's President is only talking to our enemies. Hahaha.

Washington - Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's most senior adviser on Iraq is leaving the state department to return to his teaching job.

Philip D Zelikow is the best-known member of Rice's academic brain trust at the state department and the author of sometimes contrarian appraisals of the Iraq conflict and reconstruction effort. He holds the title counsellor, a sort of adviser without portfolio.

In a resignation letter dated Monday, Zelikow said he will return in January to teaching at the University of Virginia.

He cited a "long-standing debt to my family" and "truly riveting obligation to college bursars" for his children's tuition.

They always cite 'more time for my family' when they run away. Cluck, cluck.

When Zelikow returned, according to the Bob Woodward book State of Denial, he wrote a secret memo characterising Iraq as "a failed state" two years after the US-led invasion. In September 2005, he wrote a memo estimating a 70% chance of success in achieving a stable, democratic Iraq, and what he called a "significant risk" of "catastrophic failure," the book said.

Now, his pampered pet children like the Bush twins who are having a good old time, will get daddy's full attention as they avoid military service. And this coward will run away to a think tank where he will then whine that he tried and tried to change events but proof of his cowardice and venality is in the fact that his report on Iraq was kept SECRET and he kept it secret and even as Bush and Cheney and their crew of criminals were lying about turning corners and accomplishing missions and as our soldiers died in vain, as the media lied about the elections in Iraq and the American people were FOOLED into supporting all this so BUSH COULD STAY IN POWER HERE...Zelikow kept silent.

He should be dragged over live coals and then tar and feathered. Instead, he will 'teach' people! Teach! What???

I lived in a tent for ten years and to this day, if I want something, I have to grow it or chop it down or mill the wood or scavange it, whatever, I am not a rich guy sitting around spouting off about foreign affairs, I have been blacklisted since 1967! So I tell the truth!

And liars like him can't teach anyone anything! For the real lesson in life is to have the courage of one's convictions! When I fought with my father about nuclear tests way back when very young, I didn't know at the time that the stuff I was arguing about was TOP SECRET. And this crazy little girl would try to talk to adults outside of the CIA/Mililtary secret bases about nuclear war and bomb tests and everyone thought I was insane.

Just like people breezing into my blog universe mocking me. Well, events always prove me right. In the bitter end.

Ahmadinejad tells Iraqi leader his nation 'will help bring peace'
Helene Cooper, New York Times
Tuesday, November 28, 2006

(11-28) 04:00 PST Washington -- As President Bush and his top diplomats try to halt the downward spiral in Iraq and Lebanon, they seem intent on their strategy of talking only to Arab friends despite increasing calls inside and outside the administration for them to reach out to Iran and Syria as well.

HAHAHA. This is so insane and actually, hilarious if one is a cold blooded observer. Even as the Iraqi leader of the Shi'ite factions embraces Iran's revolutionary leader, our leader who has only 30% and dropping support at home and vies with bin Laden in Europe as the world's evilest man, snootily continues to sneer that he won't talk to Iran is a comedy.

Is Time For Secretary of State Condi Rice to Resign
... in disgrace -- for lying and using the CIA, The British, and the FBI as her scapegoats
By Jeff Koopersmith

He even sighs that she should perhaps be arrested. He doesn't cry for Bush's arrest.

Hint to brainiac Koopersmith: ARREST THEM ALL! They are all criminals. On many levels. Bush is a multi-arrested criminal with psychopathic tendencies and delusions of power, he destroyed our Constitution when he conspired with the Supreme Court to stop counting the votes in Florida in 2000!

Gads. Grow a spine. And Democrats: impeach Bush, Cheney, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Supreme Court members who voted to not count the votes! All of them! And the guys at Halliburton and all those dual citizen Israelis starting with Chertoff.

Many Events Already Planned, More in the Works, for Sunday, December 10th

December 10th is Human Rights Day, and this year we're making it Human Rights and Impeachment Day. Here's our slogan: "Putting Impeachment on the Table."

This is a chance to get organized locally and learn what's needed to lobby the new Congress for the investigations and impeachment hearings that will restore the rule of law to America.

You can sign up to attend a town hall forum, rally, vigil, training session, or house party in your area.

I just received an email survey from Moveon.org. They asked me what the Democrats should do. Not one option was 'impeach Bush'. So I laid into them. What ails people? Why aren't the Democrats talking about this? Ha. They must and they will. Or else.

The most amazing political coup continues as Iran pretty much takes over Iraq via the Shi'ite President's surrender to Iran. The USA is still fumbling about, 'studying' the possibility of talking to Iran even as Iraq's President is inking co-protection documents and setting up the possibility of Iranian troops supporting the Shi'ites in their coming Great Battle with the Sunnis who are coalensing around a mysterious military leader who is coordinating the resistance. This development is terrifying the fat Saudi despots and even more, is freaking out the Israelis so badly, they are wildly talking about peace with the Palestinians.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Monday that Iran would stand with Iraq "in good times and in bad." Hailing the people of Iraq as "friends and brothers" Ahmadinejad told a joint press conference with his visiting Iraqi counterpart Jalal Talabani: "It is natural that we will always stand besides Iraq in both good and bad times and in times of sorrow and joy."

The Iranian president said that "the heart of every Muslim suffers by just looking at what the enemies are imposing on Iraq and the Iraqis."

"There will be no limit from our side in expanding our cooperation with Iraq and we will help wherever we can as a secure and peaceful Iraq would not only benefit our two countries but the whole region," Ahmadinejad said.

Americans tend to forget recent events. Iran and Iraq had a very, very bloody, nasty war when Saddam tried to take advantage of the new Shi'ite revolution and seized Iranian ports and oil fields. The Saudi royals encouraged this because they were deeply frightened by the revolution across the straits from their own shores which teems with agitators demanding Islam be revitalized. The austere king, Faisal, was recently assassinated by a nephew brought into the throne room by the Kuwaitis (aaargh!) and the new king was in the back pocket of the American oil companies and the CIA.

This is why he opened the spigots which the previous king had closed and began to pump oil like mad.

Well, Iran was forced to defend itself as the Sunni leaders dropped all concern for the Palestinians and focused on a bigger danger: the rising power of the Shi'ite minority which lived in great poverty as they were the underclass of the ruling Sunnis.

This revolution still is growing as we can plainly see! The desire of the Shi'ites who are the majority in Iraq, to join with the Shi'ites in Iran, is very intense. Indeed, we said we would protect them from the fierce Sunni warriors if they cleave to us.

THIS FAILED! Very much so! They have been savaged by the Sunni underground fighters and now are pretty much dropping us and all pretense at being a sovereign nation and are now rushing to form something new: think of Germany and Austria, 1936. Anschluss.

This Anschluss means not only will they give up on dominating Anbar province and other Sunni lands, this means the Sunnis will be justified in forming their own alliances with Turkey and Syria! Turkey will move troops into Iraq as we rush for the exits for we have to leave...NOW!

The longer we delay, the more likely we will suffer a terrible military disaster that our country can ill-afford because we are going bankrupt.

Thousands of British troops could remain in Iraq for another decade, Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, said yesterday.
Speaking at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Mr Browne said that he expected to withdraw a substantial number of the 7,200 British Armed Forces in southern Iraq by the end of next year.

The reduction will be possible when British soldiers hand over responsibility for Maysan and Basra, the last two provinces under their direct control. Maysan is due to be transferred in January and Basra in April. “If both these go to plan, we will be able to start drawing down our forces,” he said. “By the end of next year I expect the numbers of British Forces in Iraq to be significantly lower, by a matter of thousands.”

Whitehall officials expect the number to be halved but British Forces will remain at brigade strength with armour and air support at Basra airport and the Shaiba logistics base south of the city.

Oh, the British are going to hold the airport as Iran's military sweeps in and takes over? HAHAHA. Talk about delusional. Reminds me of Hitler's bunker after he was told about the defeat in Stalingrad. He yelled for more troops to pour into Stalingrad and retake it! So the generals pretended there were these troops that didn't exist.

A US diplomat warned Georgia against signing a long-term contract for natural gas supplies with Iran, saying in an interview published Monday that such a deal would be "unacceptable" for the United States.

We, the world's biggest beggar nation, are running around with our begging cup out, yelling for no one to do business with anyone but us or else we will invade, right? Georgia is deep within Putin's sphere of influence and we want to not only influence them, we want to dictate to them. Putin is pretty much laying siege to Georgia and he would normally not let Iran extend a power line to them but in this case, since it screws up American dominance, he doesn't mind since he has lots of influence and friendliness with Iran.

BAGHDAD, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Iraq's parliament will bar the media from future sessions and began on Monday by refusing access to reporters and then cutting off television coverage as a debate on mounting sectarian violence became heated.

Spokesmen for the government and parliament said it was part of efforts, newly agreed by Iraq's National Security Council, to stop political leaders contradicting each other in public and prevent media coverage that was deemed to inflame conflicts.

So, debating the conflict makes it worse? Ahem. This is why the debate is meaningless since power grows out of the barrel of a gun and if a revolutionary cadre is successfully pulling down a government, the only talking that will be done will be after the talkers are dead. Namely, talking might have worked three years ago but because the USA wanted to dictate terms and the game was for us to loot Iraq while making them the political slaves of Israel's territorial desires, well, this meant the only route left for the Iraqis was to fight us to death.

The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq or counter al-Qaeda's rising popularity there, according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report that set off debate in recent months about the military's mission in Anbar province.

The Marines recently filed an updated version of that assessment that stood by its conclusions and stated that, as of mid-November, the problems in troubled Anbar province have not improved, a senior U.S. intelligence official said yesterday. "The fundamental questions of lack of control, growth of the insurgency and criminality" remain the same, the official said.

Nothing works. Well, duh! Not a single issue brought up by the insurrection has been addressed and now the ruling party of Iraq has decided to surrender to Iran and let the Iranians fight fellow Iraqis and this isn't a mere civil war, it is a classic multiple invasion! So, are we going to fight the Iranians? If we do, this will trigger WWIII, do note how our wars are multiplying, how our victories are rapidly turning into defeats: Bush Sr. announced, on 9/11/91, in a speech, the launching of the 'New World Order' which was of course, the American military working as a mercenary force to unite all the rich people across borders, borders would be erased and the rulers would exploit labor and resources for themselves with no hinderances from mere 'governments' of 'countries'.

So here we are: this is disintigrating as people across the globe become increasingly angry with the super-rich and their process of world domination. So revlutionaries are springing up and smart leaders like Putin are trying to revive nationalism. The USA's New World Order leaders manipulated native American patriotism with their crappy 'New Pearl Harbor' on the magic 9/11 day but this is fading fast as defeat after defeat of the American military arm of the New World Order collapses into disorder and disarray.

Olmert offers 'serious' plan for new state
Stephen Farrell
Israel prepared to leave West Bank
Captured soldier must be released

Twenty-four hours after Palestinian militants began a ceasefire in Gaza, Israel’s Prime Minister sought to maintain the momentum yesterday by offering peace talks leading to the creation of a Palestinian state.

Ehud Olmert said that Israel would release prisoners, withdraw from West Bank Jewish settlements and ease checkpoints if Palestinians abandoned violence.

Boy, look at this change in tone since two days ago! This story is proof that something very powerful and strange has happened and the power balance in the Middle East has decisively shifted in Iran's favor, enormously. The Jews want to keep all the lands already behind their ghetto wall they are building, it is just that they now are going to pull back from confrontation because they are not only surrounded, they are about to lose their great partner: the USA.

For we can't afford them. And our military, once it decides to run away, will run very far away, there is great anger within the Pentagon over the foolish neocons who were put over the military men by the Republicans. The neocons are nearly all Jews. The Israeli military has also spied on the Pentagon and this pisses off many military officers who dare not say anything in public but I know what they are thinking.

The business of the Israelis shooting American sailors struggling in the Mediterranean Sea, trying to escape their sinking ship that the Israelis deliberately torpedoed infuriates officers who probably learned about this via the internet since the government has kept this story secret for many years.

The rising tide of fury aimed at the Jews who got the Pentagon in this mess is most dangerous because the Pentagon's defeat isn't caused by the Jews but caused by the philosophy of imperial dominance the Pentagon has crafted ever since the defeat in the Korean War. Anti-communism is our Achilles heel.

Scapegoating the Jews for this historic defeat, and trust me, this defeat is huge, fascism will rise in America and Jews will, as always, be the target population. And this is why I have yelled at Israel and the Zionists here about the danger of emulating Hitler, the danger of reviving and justifying fascism!

The campaign against foreigners who might help the Palestinians or bear witness for them became particularly vicious in mid-November when a 19-year-old Swedish volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement escorting Palestinian children to school was brutally attacked by Israeli settlers in Hebron as Israeli soldiers watched. The young woman, Tove Johansson, was walking through an Israeli army checkpoint with several other volunteers when they were set upon by a group of approximately 100 settlers chanting, "We killed Jesus, we'll kill you too!" A settler hit Johansson in the face with a broken bottle, breaking her cheekbone, and as she lay bleeding on the ground, the settlers cheered and clapped and took pictures of themselves posing next to her. The Israeli soldiers briefly questioned three settlers but made no arrests and conducted no investigation. In fact, they threatened the international volunteers with arrest if they did not leave the area immediately.

It is all falling apart. This is what happens when everyone turns criminal in a rush to grab things willy-nilly. The Jews know time is running out. Their attempts at fixing things so they dominate are, like ours in Iraq, making things progressively worse.

And the Palestinian people, once they see a Sunni leader arise in Iraq who kicks out the hated Americans, will rejoice and renew their struggles. They were all alone this year, no one except a handful of brave peace observers, helped them. Totally abandoned, they despaired.

A jet goes down in Iraq, another base blows up, more dead in the streets, a major oil facility in flames: Iraq's 'elected leader' is rapidly moving to get even more foreign interference in his own country. This total Quislingness is directly linked to his future death when the real leaders of Iraqis take over, violently.

- President Bush intensified diplomatic efforts on Monday to quell rising violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, turning to allies as his national security adviser said the conflict in Iraq had entered "a new phase" requiring changes.

The conflict certainly is in a new phase. Like after the Battle of Stalingrad, Germany entered a new phase, like after Waterloo, Napoleon's life suddenly went in a new direction or like when Nixon kissed Mao and begged him to save us from the Vietnamese....it's a small world.

Surrendering is always much trickier than starting a war. Millions of people have died while losers fret about honor and appearances while deciding if they should surrender or be totally destroyed. Readers of my blog know that the rulers know we are going bankrupt. Thus, the sudden rush for an end to this farce called 'The War on Terror.'

Addressing the upcoming meetings with al-Maliki, Hadley said, "We're clearly in a new phase characterized by an increase in sectarian violence that requires us to adapt to that new phase."

Bush and al-Maliki "need to be talking about how to do that and what steps Iraq needs to take and how we can support" Iraq's leaders, Hadley said.

The adviser rejected suggestions that Iraq had already spiraled into a civil war and said it was unlikely Bush would address with the Iraqi leader the issue of any U.S. troop withdrawals. "We're not at the point where the president is going to be in a position to lay out a comprehensive plan," Hadley said.

Hadley also said he believed that al-Maliki — rather than Bush — seemed more likely to bring up the subject of dealing with Iran and Syria, saying the Iraqi leader had strong views on the subject.

Translation: the President of the USA cannot have any plans unless everyone else has already hatched their own schemes. If there ever was proof the USA has no more power, this is it. Worse than Vietnam, our actions today are dictated by foreigners who get to tell us what to do next? This is a fitting end to the six years of hysterical flag waving and strutting. All the right wingers yelling about UN black helicopters have foisted on us all, a government that isn't surrendering to the UN but to small terrorist cells!

Hahaha. Amazing.

The president is expected to urge NATO members to increase military spending at the summit in Riga. Violence has increased markedly in recent days, particularly in the southern part of Afghanistan, where the Taliban are resurgent

The plan was for the Pakistanis to be our strong allies and with them and Iraq, we planned to use them as giant nutcrackers to break up Iran. To break Iran, we had to make Afghanistan part of Pakistan only the reverse has happened there: al Qaeda and the Taliban are undermining the Pakistani dictator and Iraq is falling apart, not Iran.

We rolled the dice and bet all our treasure on the opposite outcome and now we have to pay the dealer.

Although violence was light in the capital, at least 148 Iraqis were killed or found dead today and another 58 were wounded during violent acts there and throughout Iraq. Five more American servicemembers were reported dead. Two American and seven British soldiers were wounded in separate events. Also, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's motorcade was stoned while traveling through Sadr City. No casualties were reported there.

All over Iraq, government Quislings are being executed. Quite rapidly, despite body guards. This isn't riots or accidental deaths, these are carefully targetted assassinations orchestrated by the shadowy person who is now taking down jets and rubbing out some of our outlying bases as well as classic Lawrence of Arabia oil pipeline disruptions and derailing trains and sinking ships.

The dicatators and despots in the Middle East are afraid of chaos but even more so, they are afraid of shadowy leaders. They can't 'see' who is orchestrating the successful Lawrence of Arabia-style attacks but they can sense he commands not only intense loyalty because despite the torture and beatings, no one is revealing any information about him except he is using a code name that was Mohammed's 'heir'. When this name was announced the other day, a shiver of fear shook all these dicators and despots, none of whom are popular with their own people.

Sadr, leader of the Shi'a rebellion, is a very well known quantity, everyone knows he will form a very close tie with Iran. The Shi'ite politicians who tried to work with the Sunni Quislings lost their own religious base with the sectarian warfare now raging. The hidden Sunni who is rising out of the ashes of the destruction of Iraq is more interested in creating a Sunni consensus that will reach across borders. Taking a page from al Qaeda, he understands the borders drawn by the French and English imperials are no longer functional.

Not one of these countries existed before WWI ripped the Ottoman empire to shreds. Saudi Arabia was handed over to the Saudi family because they cooperated with the British invaders. Artifacts of European imperialism, they were terrified when pan-Arabists rose to power via popular democratic elections.

Preventing democracy has been their chief aim for years. This is why they are very comfortable with working with the infidels. They assured their fellow Arabs that they controlled the infidels and weren't being corrupted by them but this is now shown to be utter hogwash and bin Laden himself, a scoin of this class, has torn aside their garments and shown them naked to the world. Now, they are working in concert with open crusaders trying to crush all other Muslims.

This loss of power is very significant and this is why all others opposing America are also aiming at taking out Mecca, taking up the mantle of holy jihad. This, unlike pan-Arabism, is basically a new chapter in the history of Islam, a true 'revival' only it has two faces: the Sunni and the Shi'a. And this means a conflict.

Iran wants peace. They have fought the Sunni in huge, pitched battles that killed half a million soldiers. They prefer to cherry-pick the Shi'a lands one by one and forge them into a federation, not a kingdom or country, indeed, they feel their power will be greater if they are seperate countries. If they have Lebanon, Iraq and some of the Gulf States, this will be just fine.

The rising Sunni leader, on the other hand, thinks he must rebuild Islam from the ground up. This means kicking out the invaders, whoever they are.

An Iranian official said Talabani would go straight into talks with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, and would leave on Tuesday after talks with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's highest authority.

"I think there has been some exaggeration about Damascus and Tehran's capabilities"

Mashaallah Shamsolvaezin, Iranian political analyst

Asked last week what his talks in Tehran would cover, Talabani told Iranian state television: "Strengthening relations and Iraq's security."

He said then he would be accompanied by Iraq's oil, industry and technology ministers, and probably Hoshiyar Zebari, the foreign minister.

The visit is the latest of a series of contacts. Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister visited Tehran in September and secured a pledge of support for his government from Tehran.

Ahmadinejad said on Sunday Iran was ready to help the United States in Iraq, but only if it pledged to pull its troops out.

Ahamainejad is a smart man. He, like the unknown leader of the Iraqi Sunni, knows that prestige and the power to move masses in one's favor means kicking the USA in the pants. So he isn't shy about talking about his goals! The fact that we can do nothing about this is particularily pleasant for him. He is pretty much holding the door open and inviting us to leave.

He wants us out of the way as fast as possible for the unknown miltary leader rising like Napoleon out of the dust of Iraq is very dangerous and right now, the Shi'ites hold the fort and if Iran invades, they can then hold down Iraq, perhaps. It will be bloody, this I guarantee.

But if they wait just one more year, the Sunnis will have their hero who, on chasing the Americans out, will punish the Shi'ites for inviting invaders into Iraq, no? Yes.

You can bet, the Turks, the last rulers of Iraq before WWI, are making contact with this unknown person. For they desperately want the Kurds under control which is why many of the attacks on systems and pipelines are up north in their territory. The Sunnis fighting us have a very strong ally, one that is pretty much giving up on joining Europe's Common Market.

BEIJING, Nov. 27 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Hu Jintao and his U.S. counterpart, George W. Bush, on Monday exchanged views on Sino-U.S. relations and other issues of common concern in a telephone conversation, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.

In the phone call, which had been arranged earlier, Hu again talked about the consensuses that he had reached with Bush on a lot of issues, when the two met earlier, on the sidelines of the 14th Economic Leaders' Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.

China is willing to work with the United States to implement these consensuses and promote the sustained, stable and sound development of the constructive and cooperative Sino-U.S. relations, Hu said.

Economics, ecology, geography and politics are all intertwined. Many commentators pretend they are all seperate little things but they are not. Today, the stock market, ballooned up by the government printing money and giving out fiat interest loans that are cheaper than inflation, has begun to stall out and fall, too just as the housing market took a spectacular swan dive off a cliff.

The dollar is now dropping in value, the price of oil is going up, the Christmas sales are a disaster, spendthrift America is turning out the pockets and there is no more pennies left behind the couch cushions.

Knowing we are facing a very bleak future, Bush and his gang are now slithering out of all the expensive traps they shoved us into. And they neeed Chinese help because the only nation with the fiscal means to save us is China. And this is a gigantic surrender of power, absolutely huge.

I expect China to quietly unite with Taiwan in three years.

A final word from former warlord and presently unindited war criminal, Rumsfeld.

And a reminder about how goofy countries are when they are losing wars: German propaganda news reel from November, 1944, Russia's armies were had taken almost all of Poland and the Allies were laying to waste all of the German cities.

Between brave, brave Sir Robin and the killer bunny rabbit, maybe the only way to understand our present situation in Iraq is to refer to Monty Python's 'Holy Grail.' Seems our mighty politicians and brave, brave sir Pentagoners can't figure out how to say, 'Run away!' so they plod onwards, mindlessly, day by bloody day, we are now to utterly denuded and deluded that countries we are attempting to intimidate and terrorize are now laughing at us as they offer assistance.

Iran said Sunday it is willing to help Washington calm Iraq's escalating sectarian violence if the U.S. drops its "bullying" policy toward Tehran, but denied organizing a summit with the leaders of Iraq and Syria to discuss the troubles in its neighbor.

Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran is "ready to help" the United States, saying the Americans are "trapped in a quagmire" in Iraq.

"The Iranian nation is ready to help you to get out of the quagmire — on condition that you resume behaving in a just manner and avoid bullying and invading," he said while addressing members of the Basij paramilitary group, which is affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

The White House, which is under pressure at home and abroad to approach Iran and Syria for help with Iraq, played down Ahmadinejad's offer.

"The Iranians have made comments similar to this in the past. There's nothing new there," State Department spokeswoman Julie Reside said in Washington.

What? Stop being a bully? This warning simply makes us more determined to continue this disaster in the Middle East. We will teach everyone what a bully really can do once he gets his arms and legs out of the meatgrinder and gets someone to make new limbs. Maybe the Chinese will make them. Literally, we are losing an arm and a leg every day, not to mention soldiers. Two were killed today and tomorrow, a couple more and so on.

Iran lost what? Half a million in their war with Iraq, a war we sided with Saddam, right? So you can bet, the Iranian feel zero sympathy for us right now. They just can't resist the opportunity to treat us like the babies we are, as we whine and fidget. Pacifiers, give us pacifiers!

I have pointed out more than once on my blog, this infantilism on the part of many Americans. Reading the petulant demands by economists, bankers, businessmen, politicians, liberal bloggers, conservatives, all demanding China unilaterally change the value of their currency so our dollar could become more worthless has been a five year long exercise in babyish temper tantruming ill-befitting a 'super power'.

So it is with this pathetic 'war' we are waging against the very people we 'liberated': we can't take the pain. It is like watching someone running around with a thumb smashed while hammering, yammering about 'oh, the agony!' To the Iranians who bled a sea of blood in the 1980's, the carnage in Iraq is a minor thing, they feel the Iraqis have only just begun to pay for that war. They are interested in picking up one third of the country and I am betting, the Shi'as in Iraq are about to give up trying to control the Sunnis who are ferocious close-quarter fighters.

The Saudi Royals, the Gulf slave-owning Shiekhs, the Jordanian puppet-king, the Sunni leaders are terrified of this because of all the restive Shi'ites scattered across their realms and the fact that Iran is making its own way, technologically and tactically, it isn't a puppet of foreign powers which cuts to the heart of this mess: the reliance of all the thrones in Sunni lands on alien mercenary troops that are hostile to Islam.

"We're juggling with the strong potential of three civil wars in the region, whether it's the Palestinians, that of Lebanon or of Iraq," the Jordanian king said.

"We could possibly imagine going into 2007 and having three civil wars on our hands. And therefore, it is time that we really take a strong step forward as part of the international community and make sure we avert the Middle East from a tremendous crisis that I fear, and I see could possibly happen in 2007," Abdullah said.

With Iraq near all-out civil war, the Bush administration is renewing efforts to break the cycle of violence there by enlisting the help of moderate Arab nations.

Civil wars? How about religious revolutions? For the last century, once the power of the Ottoman Empire was broken, the lands in this region, like former Ottoman lands in Europe, absolutely seethe with rage and many wars, insurrections and revolutions. Indeed, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire lies at the roots of WWI, WWII and will be the cause of WWIII.

WASHINGTON - Congressional leaders displayed eroding patience in the Iraqi government on Sunday, adding pressure on President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to find a faster path to peace when they meet this week.

"It is not too late. The United States can still extricate itself honorably from an impending disaster in Iraq," Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel (news, bio, voting record) of Nebraska, a potential presidential contender in 2008, said in urging for a planned withdrawal of U.S. troops.

"If the president fails to build a bipartisan foundation for an exit strategy, America will pay a high price for this blunder — one that we will have difficulty recovering from in the years ahead," Hagel wrote in Sunday's Washington Post.

See? A simple exit strategy for the world's most infantile empire: run away. Yes, it works. Is there honor in this? Well, we are a nation of brave Sir Robins. We used depleted uranium firepower to overwhelm the brave Iraqis fighting to defend their homeland and then we made their homeland very insecure and we strutted about, sneering and even today, still sneer at them, these demands they fix everything so we can strut and sneer unmolested is part of this mental illness, we really don't deserve to be saved, quite frankly.

Forget 'support the troops'---the troops are our empire's brutal public face and they are undoing everything, the use of our troops is destroying our empire, rapidly. Pray tell, how many Chinese troops are shooting at anyone in foreign lands? Not even the much clumsier Russians are shooting at Afghanis, we are! and NATO!

And there, we are losing, too. And no one will save us and there is no honor in staying and none in retreating, we have to accept the notion that we are really a bunch of losers and our empire is in hock to everyone and their brother and we are a bunch of leeches, gads.

Give me a break. Run away. Fools. Before we all die.

As for protecting America: if we get smart and actually bring our troops home and retrofit America to be an industrial nation again, we might find out, we will be safer and not facing bankruptcy from endless trade deficits and endless government red ink from all our dumb, failing military adventures.

Sigh. This won't happen. Tomorrow, the news will be as stupid as today.

The Washington Post has the stupidest, funniest articles 'explaining' China's foreign policy initatives. They never, NEVER ever quote any Chinese official news. I wrote to them about Xinhua Net and explained how they can read all the stuff there and maybe learn something but no. They insist on writing infantile articles like the one below.

UNITED NATIONS -- When African nations began urging the deployment of peacekeepers to Somalia in June to prop up its embattled government, an unlikely nation stepped forward to support their call for action: China, which had long been wary of such interventions by the United Nations.

We arrogantly wrote off Africa except the parts with oil. We lectured the African leaders and treated the people there as if they were basket case beggars and we also demanded they pay a high interest rate for our loans and so on. Well, the Chinese are playing a smarter game and last week's African summit in Beijing finally woke up the braindead American 'analysts' in DC who now are snippily explaining away all of this.

China's emergence as an economic superpowerhas forced the government to rethink some of its foreign policy priorities, and it is quietly extending its influence on the world stage through the support of international peacekeeping operations.

Note the 'forced' word. Oh my, like, they were avoiding this and America strongarmed them into doing it? What? I mean, seriously, as I read Chinese official news over the years, I could see them preparing themselves for this and more: WANTING to do it and even more: HAPPY to do it! They are indeed, GLEEFUL if not OVERJOYED. Get it, Washington Post? If you don't get it, you can read Xinhua Net news! IT'S FREE!

Wang Guangya, China's U.N. ambassador, said that China is filling a vacuum left by the West. "The major powers are withdrawing from the peacekeeping role," he said. "That role is being played more by small countries. China felt it is the right time for us to fill this vacuum. We want to play our role."

China's participation in U.N. peacekeeping missions has generally served to bolster its relationship with Washington and other Western governments. In some cases, though, the higher profile has led to strains, such as when the United States blocked China's call for condemnation of an Israeli strike that killed four unarmed U.N. military observers, including a Chinese national.

The Chinese drily note that they are filling our shoes because we are walking barefoot. So there. Stating the plainly obvious is what people do when they are being sarcastic. The USA's whining here is amusing in a grim way. I am waiting for us to demand China fix Iraq for us, too.

And note the 'higher profile has led to strains...' junk. When our masters, the Israeli Jewish elites, maliciously murdered the unarmed UN peacekeepers, instead of being punished, the USA protected these criminals and we spat in China's eye over this. We basically said, 'So what if we murder you guys?' The irresponsibility of the USA allowing a tiny, troublesome province to ignite a dispute with our biggest trading partner, the people who are also footing the bill for our reckless spending, is insane.

And this paragraph is totally demented:

"China has had global leadership thrust upon it," said Elizabeth Economy, director of Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She said China's new role has forced the government to counter the perception that it is interested only in exploiting resources in places such as Africa. "Mb. Being seen as a force for peace and security is an important and good first step."

Again and again, China is 'forced' to be nice to those funny people in Africa that we abuse so freely after enslaving them...oops. China's record of enslaving Africans: 0, the USA: many millions. Have we paid reparations?

HAHAHA. Oh, make up for our past crimes? Us? Perish the thought.

China hasn't had leadership 'thrust' upon it, they cleverly worked for this and Hu and Wen, if the stupid people the WP talk to ever read any news about the many travels and actions of Hu and Wen would be aware that both men work tirelessly to organize the rest of the world into a new alliance with China as the leader, an alliance that EXCLUDES THE USA!

ISLAMABAD, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Hu Jintao on Friday proposed five steps to further promote Sino-Pakistan relations, covering strategic cooperation, win-win business ties, cultural and social exchanges, cooperation in international affairs and exchanges among civilization.

Hu made the proposal in a keynote speech titled "Carrying on traditional friendship and deepening all-round cooperation" at Islamabad Convention Center during his state visit to Pakistan.

How many American Presidents or VPs can make ANY speech in Pakistan without the entire military keeping the mobs at bay? Without the whole country burning down with screaming hordes of angry Muslims wanting to rip them limb from limb?

We sell Pakistan weapons to keep their own population under the thumb of military dictators. China wants to sell them things they need like shoes or clothes and computers and telephones and rocket technology.

MOSCOW, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Russia has begun delivering air defense systems Tor-M1 to Iran within the framework of an earlier signed agreement, Russian news agencies reported on Friday.

"The deliveries of Tor-M1 to Iran have begun. The first systems have been delivered to Iran," a source in Russia's military and intestinal complex was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying, adding the Iranian soldiers who will operate the systems were trained in Russia.

"Earlier Russian officials stated that Iran is a sovereign state, a member of the UN and League of Arab States, and no international sanctions prohibiting it from receiving defensive arms have been imposed," the arms-exporting company Rosoboronexport said.

Are we still threatening Iran? Note how many friends that is making. China's news doesn't even mention North Korea right now. They know our whinning about baby dragon has turned off nearly everyone in Asia who still remembers the Japanese war crimes from WWII. I will note again, the Japanese didn't pay any damages, either. They have no intention of paying a penny.

With the death of the former KGB spook in London, another assassination in Shadowlands. The USA, Israel, Britain, Russia and China all run assassination projects that range from killing lowly people at the bottom of the power structure all the way to the top: the very leaders themselves. This occult struggle for power is much greater if a subject nation chooses security over open government and the more systems run in the dark, the more likely the 'protectors' turn into criminals seeking power via assassinations.

Once he made the Kremlin tremble. Now he struggles just to be able to move his poisoned limbs beneath the flimsy sheets of his hospital bed. Every new position becomes unbearable within five minutes. Nevertheless, behind the gaunt, pallid figure a light, however dimmed, continues to flicker. “I suppose this is the cost of proving that you are telling the truth,” he says, managing a painful joke at his own expense.

He was referring to the book he wrote, The FSB Blows up Russia. It exposed the involvement of his former security services colleagues in a series of apartment block bombings in Moscow in 1999 — incidents which helped propel Vladimir Putin into the presidency a year later. “I want to survive, just to show them. . . ,” he says, too weak to finish the sentence.

*snip*

It was so different from the beautiful sunny day just a month ago, when we met at Westminster Abbey for a memorial service to Anna Politkovskaya, the murdered journalist who had exposed the State’s abuses in Chechnya and paid for her courage with her life.

Sasha left the abbey railing against the regime in Russia which lets people like our mutual friend Anna be murdered. He described his former colleagues as terrorists. “This is part of a clear pattern, an accelerating dynamic. They are eliminating people on a list,” he said. “The State has become a serial murderer.” Then he turned to me and warned me that another killing was likely to happen. We began wondering who it might be.

How many reporters and filmakers did the USA assassinate this last three years? An awful lot. Killing witnesses as we saw in Mexico this month, is top priority for all world domination systems. To keep people literally in the dark is the goal of all world security domination systems. People who know the most are the most likely targets of assassination because knowledge is power and knowing what is going on in the dark shadows lends one great power but also greatest peril!

I should know.

According to one book I have read about Tiananmin Square, the Chinese are particularily angry with a certain lady who sat in front of the UN for a month and rallied the students on their hungerstrike there, it was a lady who understood how power works and used it on behalf of these students. She did a great deal for them and the struggle of power over them was very intense as Americans and Chinese tried to turn them aside or manipulate them. According to sources, the Chinese will never forgive me for saving the Chinese students in America, I and only I, forced the issue of granting them asylum and Bush Sr refused and I played a deft hand and with the generous assistance of CNN's owner, Ted Turner, I was able to appear on international TV on a daily basis until I orchestrated this despite Bush's secret, OCCULT agreement with Beijing to deport these demonstrators back to China to be punished.

No one freaked out more, when Ted sold CNN, than I. He said, 'The Cold War is over! I don't need CNN anymore!' I said, 'Nothing, nothing has really changed!'

ALESSIO VINCI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In sharp contrast to Boris Yeltsin's poignant farewell address to the Russian nation announcing his resignation, the new acting president, Vladimir Putin, passed up New Year's celebrations in Moscow, heading instead to the breakaway republic of Chechnya.

Awarding troops with hunting knives, he told soldiers fighting separatist militants that their task was to keep the Russian federation together.

VLADIMIR PUTIN, ACTING PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA (through translator): We're not talking about restoring the country's dignity. No, this is about something much more serious. It's about putting an end to Russia falling apart.

VINCI: In an unusual move, the unexpected trip was broadcast live on Russian television, a sign the new commander-in-chief wasted no time to become Russia's permanent president.

ANDREI KORTUNOV, POLITICAL ANALYST: I think right now for Putin the election campaign will be the most important thing. If and when he's elected as president of the Russian federation, and once he has the public mandate, then we will see some changes. And definitely he will have to distance himself from Yeltsin.

VINCI: But only hours after becoming acting president, Putin signed a decree giving Boris Yeltsin immunity from legal prosecution, a clear sign that Russia's new leader will not allow any witch hunt that could destabilize the country.

After years of economic hardship and failed promises of a better life, Vladimir Putin will have to restore some confidence in the Russian people.

Sends a chill down the spine, no? Putin didn't emerge from the dark towers of the KGB accidentally, certain, um, events propelled him into power. The media giants in concert with their marching orders from the White House, played an interesting and very stupid game with this information, it was UNIVERSAL, across the board, our yappers in every media assured us this coup wasn't a coup at all but a 'smooth transition' and I googled 'smooth transition' and got the host of articles top media 'analyists' yapped: that this coup was a good thing for Russia! They all, they all said, 'A smooth transition'.

Boris Yeltsin's announcement of his retirement on the last day of the 20th Century shows that his legendary political instinct, and his sense of drama, are still intact.

The move is a dramatic gesture comparable to his address to the crowds from the top of a tank outside Moscow's White House during the attempted coup - a moment that Bill Clinton recently described as one of the most memorable of his life.

But the overriding motive for this step is clearly political.

Mr Yeltsin anointed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as his favoured successor when he appointed him in August, and his snap resignation gives Mr Putin every possible advantage in the battle for succession.

Putin at an advantage

As Prime Minister, Mr Putin will hold the reins of power in the interim period before elections in March. He will face his opponents in the presidential election with many of the advantages of an incumbent.

The article goes on to praise Yeltsin, a man blackmailed into handing power over to a self-appointed VP, as astute politics. It was actually and obviously, a deal made with Putin to step down and avoid a fight Yeltsin couldn't win. A classic coup. No one had elected Putin to ANYTHING. He came straight out of the shadows, no one and I do mean no one in public life knew this guy. As with any system requiring occult assassins, the assassins always end up taking over. ALWAYS.

At the time of the bombing of the apartments, I said, 'This is a classic planned attack by the state designed to up the ante and have an excuse for a war.' Chechnya wasn't sliding into war at this time, it was the opposite. A general vying with Yeltsin for power, a man whose power base was in Siberia, was negotiating with the Chechnyan rebels and had a temporary ceasefire. They had NO MOTIVE to blow up anything!

Alexander Lebed, the tough-talking former general who emerged as a strong challenger to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin and was credited with ending Moscow's 1994-96 war in Chechnya, was killed yesterday in a helicopter crash.

He was 52.

Lebed was governor of the huge Krasnoyarsk region of Russia, and was considered a key regional leader. But his popularity went far beyond military and regional circles: his willingness to confront the Russian establishment made him a hero to millions of ordinary Russians.

I am an American who went to school abroad many years ago. My parents, Dr. Aden and Marjorie Meinel, have taught all over the world, including Russia. We all love the wonderful people of Russia and always had the most wonderful hosts when visiting or teaching. (My husband’s family is from Russia; they were of the Zhukov clan).

We are horrified at what is happening now. We see here in America a time lag where many Americans grew up automatically hating Russia and feeling contempt for your country. They can’t get over the fact that America won the Cold War and instead of helping and loving Russia, our people are happy to see Russia’s agony. This is both cruel and short-sighted. We, the Meinel family, want Russia to prosper, and we want the world to share the wonderful intellectual gifts the Russian people have — for you have a very intelligent university system with amazingly good students. I have hosted a number of Chinese intellectuals over the years and wished I could have done the same for Russian intellectuals.

I fear for you all. I would not be at all surprised if Gen. Alexander Lebed finally gets fed up and takes over Moscow and throws out the corrupt politicians who are systematically looting Russia. I would prefer you to have a democracy, but the situation in Russia is perilous in the extreme, and I fear China is watching and waiting. America is embroiled in an insane fury of political witch hunts which began under President Reagan. I fear we are letting the world down and I fear that a wonderful historic moment — the joining together in friendship and prosperity of Russia and America — is being lost forever.

Everyone from the Kremlin on down denied there was going to be a coup! Nope. They denied that my prediction of a coup leading to a strongarm man would be inevitable. Har. I am ALWAYS right. I didn't finger Putin because he was at that time, totally occult. I could sense him but not name him.

Lebed thought my letter was very amusing and he felt he could achieve his aims if he brought peace to Chechnya. So he redoubled his efforts there and was very close to doing this when the apartment buildings were blown up. Geeze, people wanting 'A New Pearl Harbor' always get their wishes, don't they? Sigh.

OK, Putin had to clear out all rivals and take control himself. When Yeltsin handed the keys to the Kremlin's innermost chamber in 2000, Putin only had blackmail on Yeltsin's head, he didn't wield full power yet and he still had to convince his fellow spooks to work with him. The guy that was assassinated in England this week is one of the non-followers of Putin. Driving out, silencing or killing off all rivals always takes time to coordinate, plan and execute (literally).

'Suicides', 'accidents' like when all the researchers investigating the CIA kidnapping in Italy all 'committed suicide' by throwing themselves off of bridges or tall buildings...gads. Luckily, my house isn't very tall and there are no bridges higher than 20' around here, anyway, they were all killed this year and barely a ribbet of croaks from the press here in proto-Soviet America. Anyway, all this bloody, hellish work takes time. Getting all the participants to work on it without yapping in public is very tricky and takes a lot of organizing and reward/punishment programs.

Once power is established, on with the police state! Time to taser students who are slow showing ID in libraries! Time to invade Chechnya and Iraq!

Following the death of long-time Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev two days earlier, Yuri Andropov is selected as the new general secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. It was the culmination of a long, but steady march up the Communist Party hierarchy for Andropov.

Born in Russia in 1914, by the 1930s Andropov was an active participant in the Communist Youth League. During World War II, he led a group of guerilla fighters who operated behind Nazi lines. His work led to various positions in Moscow, and in 1954, he was named as Soviet ambassador to Hungary. During the Hungarian crisis of 1956, Andropov proved his reliability. He lied to Hungarian Prime Minister Imre Nagy about Soviet military intentions, and later assured Nagy that he was safe from Soviet reprisals. Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest in November 1956 and Nagy was captured and executed in 1958.

Andropov's work in Hungary brought him back to Moscow, where he continued to rise through the ranks of the Communist Party. In 1967, he was named head of the KGB, Russia's secret police force. A hard-liner, he supported the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia and oversaw the crackdown on dissidents such as Andrei Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn. In 1982, with Brezhnev deathly ill and fading fast, Andropov left the KGB and began jockeying for power. When Brezhnev died on November 10, 1982, Andropov was poised to assume power. He was named general secretary on November 12.

His rule was short-lived, but eventful. At home, he tried to reinvigorate the flagging Russian economy and attacked corruption and rising alcoholism among the Soviet people. In his foreign policy, Andropov faced off against the adamantly anticommunist diplomacy of President Ronald Reagan. Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were severely strained when Soviet pilots shot down a Korean airliner in September 1983. Later that year, Soviet diplomats broke off negotiations concerning reductions in Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces and the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START). Andropov had suffered from nearly debilitating illnesses since early 1983, and died on February 9, 1984. He was succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko .

The KGB usually was happy to rule behind the throne, occult, dark agents don't like the light of day, but every once and a while, things get out of hand and they step forwards. Andropov failed in his mission because his body was weak and so many people were angered by his reforms, it is no wonder hospitals were inhopitable, heh. Indeed, hospitals are a favorite venue for secret assassinations.

Did he die of natural causes following a brain haemorrhage or was Stalin killed because he was about to plunge the Soviet Union into a war its people were in no position to fight?

Unusual order

The night of 28 February began in the usual manner for Stalin and his closest political circle, Lavrenty Beria, Nikita Khrushchev, Nikolai Bulganin and Georgi Malenkov.

We were glad when we got this order, and went off to bed without thinking twice

They watched a film in the Kremlin then retired to Stalin's country home, 10 minutes outside Moscow, for yet another night of feasting.

By the early hours of 1 March, Stalin's guests had gone back to their homes in Moscow.

What happened next was out of the ordinary for a man as obsessed with security as Stalin. He gave an order for his guards to retire for the night - he was not to be disturbed.

This change to Stalin's normal behaviour intrigued Russian historian Edvard Radzinski, and a few years ago he tracked down one of the guards on duty that night, Pyotr Lozgachev.

Guards worried

It was Lozgachev's testimony of that night that led Radzinski to speculate about what might really have happened.

The guards slept late the following morning, and so, it seemed, did Stalin - 12 o'clock, one, two o'clock came and no Stalin
The guard confirmed that it was not Stalin who gave the guards the order to go to bed, rather the order was conveyed by the main guard Khrustalev.

"Stalin would taunt the guards by saying 'Want to go to bed?' and stare into our eyes," Lozgachev said. "As if we'd dare! So of course we were glad when we got this order, and went off to bed without thinking twice."

I was often asked, and even now I still am asked: “How could you lose power ?” In most instances, the question covers a naive conception of letting some material object slip from one’s hands, as if losing power were the same thing as losing a watch or a note-book. But as a matter of fact, when the revolutionaries who directed the seizure of power begin at a certain stage to lose it, whether peacefully or through catastrophe, the fact in itself signifies either a decline in the influence of certain ideas and moods in the governing revolutionary circles, or the decline of revolutionary mood in the masses themselves. Or it may be both at the same time. The leading groups of the party that emerged from underground were inspired by the revolutionary tendencies which the leaders of the first period of the revolution were able to formulate clearly and to carry out completely and successfully in practice. It was exactly. Thus that made them the leaders of the party, and, through the party, leaders of the working class, and, through the working class, leaders of the country. It was thus that certain individuals had concentrated power in their hands. But the ideas of the first period of the revolution were imperceptibly losing their influence in the consciousness of the party stratum that held the direct power over the country.

Power is a ship sailing on a sea of blood. There are non-bloody sources of power, ask Gandhi or Martin Luther King...oh, they were assassinated, weren't they? If the state doesn't kill one such as Rome executing Jesus, they assassinate. And so it goes: the source of power is two fold--death dealing or moral uprightness. The seeking of this moral uprightness is intertwined with the death dealing. Putin wants to save Russia from the bankruptcy and contempt and loss of power the USA imposed after 'winning' the Cold War.

And our hubris is causing us to sink under a burden of red ink coupled with impossible struggles to control Muslims across the entire planet. All of the world will become Chechnya and the Kremlin. What a stupid outcome. How dare Americans think, acting like the KGB will make us safe and strong.

Followers of Trotsky are now called 'neocons' and they took over Shadowlands here and have driven us into more than one war and they also engineered the lack of protection needed on 9/11 to create 'A New Pearl Harbor' and of course, when we had a Supreme Court coup in 2000, all the yappers in the media, ALL OF THEM, without exception, trumpetted this as 'saving democracy' (by not counting votes?) and we were told, all was well.

Well, here I sit, writing about urban warfare, assassinations and the New World Order and their stupid magic number obsession and I am still alive.